Friday, May 01, 2015

Bernie Sanders, you little scamp. This could be fun

There won't be enough of them, but it looks like a lot of Americans are tired of the same old nonsense. By which I mean Sen. Bernie Sanders is already raising serious cash for his, yes, I'll say it, Quixotic bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.

On Friday, the Sanders campaign announced that it has raised more than $1.5 million online in the 24 hours since he announced his candidacy. It is a surprisingly heavy haul for a candidate whom some in the Democratic chattering class have cast off as a gadfly and viewed as unable to wrest the nomination from the overwhelming favorite, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The donations came from a broad base of supporters -- some 35,000 donors who gave an average of $43.54 a piece, according to the Sanders campaign. The campaign also said it signed up more than 100,000 supporters through its website, building what it calls a "mass movement."

To put that in perspective, as reported by The Washington Post, "[i]n the first 24 hours since launching their campaigns, Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) raised $1.25 million and Sens. Rand Paul (Ky.) and Ted Cruz (Texas) raised about $1 million each, according to their campaigns."

In a bit of stellar analysis, the Post notes Sanders, a self-described socialist, "does not have a deep base of wealthy donors and corporate PACs who give to his campaigns."

He said Thursday he is taking on the "billionaire class" he says are controlling the U.S. political system, and would make the surge in political spending in recent years -- especially through super PACs fueled by unlimited donations -- a major theme of his campaign.

Okay, Sen. Sanders isn't going to win anything except the gratitude of principled progressives everywhere. But this is a damned impressive start, and I'm actually getting excited that some real ideas could be discussed over the next year and a half instead of the mealy-mouthed mush for which Democrats are so famous. It would be a change of pace.